Blackmagic Design Acquires Assets of Cintel International

FREMONT, CA— Blackmagic Design has acquired the assets of Cintel International, one of the world’s leading researchers, designers and manufacturers of motion picture film scanners.

Through this acquisition, following the liquidation of Cintel International earlier in 2012, Blackmagic Design has acquired the intellectual property and all aspects of Cintel’s entire portfolio of film scanning products. This includes all of the IP, name and brand ownership and product development rights for the Cintel diTTo and dataMill digital scanners lines, URSA, C-Reality, DSX, and Millennium telecine lines, as well as imageMill data management products.

“This is a very exciting acquisition for Blackmagic Design. Cintel products are the most trusted names in the film scanning business, and the incredible design expertise that has been built into every one of the Cintel products is amazing,” said Grant Petty, CEO, Blackmagic Design.

“The film market is in the middle of massive changes and how film is used is changing everyday. What hasn’t changed is the acknowledgement that film is an extremely creative way to capture images. This acquisition gives Blackmagic Design the ability to combine our vision and expertise with Cintel technology to provide the best technology for artists using film, more efficient and affordable ways to bring film into a digital workflow and better ways to archive and restore existing archive film worldwide,” continued Petty.

Service and support for existing Cintel customers will be handled by UK based Cine Solutions Ltd. and US based Cine Solutions Inc. Both are independent of Blackmagic Design and will supply replacement parts and repairs, provide expert engineering services as well as 24/7 maintenance help line to all users of equipment previously manufactured and supplied by Cintel International.

Cintel telecine and film scanners and other post production products are used by some of the world’s leading film, commercial and television companies, across both long form and short form productions, and have become one of the primary film scanners for film archiving projects worldwide.

Since its founding in 1927 by John Logie Baird, one of the fathers of the television technology business, Cintel has become one of the most recognized names in the post production, film scanning and digital intermediate markets. Over its more than 80 years, Cintel has been one of the driving forces in developing film and television scanning technology, from the installation of the BBC’s first flying spot telecine in 1950 and the introduction of the industry changing MKIII digital telecine in 1975, to the recent introduction of diTTo evolution super 2K and 4K data scanning system in 2009.Most recently, Cintel introduced the new diTTo Evolution film scanner product, building off their popular dataMill line of film scanners. With the introduction of the diTTo evolution, a 16mm and 35 mm Super 2K and 4K data scanning system, customers are now provided with a high quality, high speed digital film scanner designed for all data scanning applications. This has included mastering, digital intermediate, special effects, archiving and restoration and has allowed Cintel to continue to gain new customers across all areas of post production.